Archive for the ‘emailmarketingtips’ Category

ATTN: SMALL BIZ OWNERS. Email Marketing

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

EMarketing blog: http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP/

The mission of this blog, started by the Founders of www.helpamericaspeople.com, is to raise awareness of the most cost-effective marketing tool for Small Business owners like you     >>>>

 EMAIL MARKETING

 

The content you include in your e-newsletters and  promotional email blasts run a very close second in importance to list management as the key to becoming a successful email marketer.  As a communications tool, the internet has no equal.  Just look at the rapid and pervasive growth of first email, then social media. Add to that the wealth of information available with a mouse click or two.  The depth and breadth of the information available on the internet rivals (and most likely exceeds) the U.S. Library of Congress.

 

As an email marketer your mantra should be:  Content is King!  You’re probably thinking, OK, but what type of content?

 

E-Newsletters

If you’re already sending an email newsletter, or thinking about it, here’s where the ubiquitous 80-20 rule comes into play.  Eighty percent of the content in an email newsletter should be about your customers’ and prospects’ needs, desires and interests. 

This can include industry news & trends, helpful and timely information, how-to-tips, interviews with experts, success stories, testimonials, surveys and links to white papers…and more.   The writing style should be readable and thought-provoking.  Succinct and concise content works better than long articles in this format.  Readers are very, very busy and prefer snippets of useful information.  Also, encourage your readers/subscribers to give you feedback on the enewsletter’s format, frequency and content.

 

Think of an email newsletter as a long term marketing tool; your goal is to build a trusting and credible relationship with your customers and prospective customers.  The other 20% of e-newsletter content can be about your company, but try to keep it more informational than promotional, i.e., new store opening, new product or service offered, link to an article about your company, your company’s recognition, awards and charity/community involvement.

 

Whether your content is written in-house or by a freelance writer, the writer needs to focus on the benefits/solutions your customers/prospects derive when using your product or service. Why is this important?  Because, every customer, both businesses and consumers, are always asking themselves the following question each and everytime they’re exposed to a potential purchase decision:  What’s In It For Me.

 

Solo E-mail Blasts

In additon to an email newsletter campaign, a shorter term, more promotional email communication is frequently included in a business email marketing plan.  Often called an email blast, solo email or email postcard, these communications serve as reminders (“tomorrow is the last day to receive your 25% discount” or “online classes are filling up quickly — you only have 10 more days to register online”), sales alerts, invitations to events or seminars, preferred customer promotions, new customer offers, etc.  Again benefits-driven copy is critical here.  Why should your reader care that there are only 10 days to register for the online class?  Benefit: Because taking this course or program will prepare them for a new, in-demand career as a Medical Assistant in less than a year!

 

When working with small businesses, I recommend a minimum of a monthly enewsletter.  If your content is relevant, interesting and informative, you’ll soon develop a trusting relationship with your target audience.  Be sure to send the enewsletter on a timely basis (if they sign up for a free monthly newsletter be certain you deliver.)  They’ve come to expect the frequency.  They look forward to hearing from you and start believing that you understand their needs. and can solve their problems.

 

The significance of building an ongoing relationship with your target audience cannot be overstated.  As a business owner, you never know when customers and prospects are ready to buy. In fact, research shows that six to nine (or more) contacts are often required to turn a prospect into a customer. Frequent contact with your target audience will keep your business “top of mind”.  When they’re ready to buy, you’ll have a better chance of getting their business.

 

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Next Post:  Email Format & Layout

ATTN: SMALL BIZ OWNERS. Email Marketing

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

EMarketing blog: http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP/

The mission of this blog, started by the Founders of www.helpamericaspeople.com, is to raise awareness of the most cost-effective marketing tool for Small Business owners like you

EMAIL MARKETING

Since February 2, 2010 this blog has been extolling the virtues of email marketing for small  businesses, especially those with five or fewer employees.  There is simply no more high impact, low cost, online  marketing tool available.  If you’re still not convinced, check out the next few  blogs that will discuss how a monthly  email newsletter from your company can –

• turn your prospects (leads) into customers
• turn current customers into repeat buyers
• reactivate past customers
• drive traffic to your website
• build and maintain loyalty with your customers
• stay “top of mind” with your target audience

Thanks to the internet, as a small business owner you can now “play with the big guys.”  In fact, you hold the advantage because no large company, no matter how high their customer service standards are, can ever compete with the “up close and personal” relationships a small business can establish with its customers.  And, Permission-Based E-mail Marketing has now made it possible for small business owners like you to communicate daily, weekly or monthly with customers and prospects at ridicuously affordable prices.

If you’ve researched  or tested other online marketing methods, you know the costs can add up pretty quickly.  These methods include search engine marketing (Pay-per-Click), e-newsletter sponsorship, renting an opt-in list for an email campaign and purchasing banner ads.

As discussed in previous blogs, the most critical step in launching email marketing campaigns is the first step:  Your House List (your customers and prospects).  Without an updated list of customers and prospects ,who have given you permission to send them information and offers via email, you’re like an automobile without an engine.  You are going nowhere. (Note:  I’m strongly recommending that you start out by emailing  exclusively to your house list; later you may want to conduct a test by renting an opt-in list.)

Small businesses generally have small house lists.  Depending on how long you’ve been in business, you could have anywhere from 25 to 500 records on your house list.  If you haven’t already, enter these customers and prospects into an Excel spreadsheet with as many fields  of information you have, i.e., first name, last name, phone number, business name, products or services purchased and date of purchase, amount of purchase, etc.

Most importantly, do you have the email addresses of your customers and prospects?  If you have their business card and it includes an email address that is considered implicit permission to send them emails.  Just be sure to obey the law and include an Unsubscribe option in ALL  you email communications to your house list.   If you don’t have your customers’ email address, it’s also appropriate to call your customers and let them know you’re launching an email newsletter with valuable information and promotional offers and would they like to subscribe to the free enewsletter.

VERY IMPORTANT: Be prepared to maintain and manage your house list on a regular basis — no less than once a week.  That means you must honor unsubscribes and remove them from your house list as soon as possible.  Also, update customer and prospect profile information on a timely basis, such as physical address, phone number, email address, etc.

Once you have a plan for building and maintaining a clean house list, you’ll need to focus on steps two, three and four of launching your monthly e-newsletter:  Content, Format & Layout and Deployment of your e-newsletter to your house list.

Next post:  E-newsletter Content

Suggested reading:

ATTN: SMALL BIZ OWNERS. Email Marketing

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

EMarketing blog: http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP/

 

The mission of this blog, started by the Founders of www.helpamericaspeople.com, is to raise awareness of the most cost-effective marketing tool for Small Business owners like you >>>  EMAIL MARKETING

 

 This blog will introduce you to 13 terms you need to know to expand your knowledge of  email marketing.   Refer to the blog postings dated April 17th and 23rd to learn about 8 of the 13 terms.  The remaining 5 email marketing terms are delineated in this posting:  Personalization, Segmentation, SPAM, Subject Line and Targeting.

 

If you want to become a successful email marketer, Personalization, Segmentation and Targeting should always be top of mind when developing each email marketing campaign.

Personalization

Personalization helps you to best leverage the benefits of email marketing — building and maintaining a strong relationship with your customers and prospects, ultimately leading to their taking the action you want them to take.  The more relevant, targeted and personal your email, the better chance you have to meet your campaign goals.

This is the time where an information-rich house list is priceless.  The more profile information you have for each customer and prospect on your list, the more personalized, targeted and relevant your emails will be.

Start by addressing each recipient by their first name or first and last name.  This makes the recipient feel more like a person rather than a piece of data.  Next, if you’re keeping track of purchase and product information, you can personalize the copy in the body of the email even further.  For example, you may have 50 customers who haven’t purchased from you in over six months.  You can tailor your email copy to this group – “we’ve missed you” or “we want you back and we’re willing to make you an offer….”  Any information that makes the recipient feel like you know them and their interests and value an ongoing relationship with them will lead to more successful campaigns.

Don’t send one generic message to everyone on your house list – email recipients are more sophisticated and know a “form” email when they see one.  Additionally, you certainly don’t want to speak to prospects the same way you speak to customers.  Here is where list segmentation becomes very crucial because it drives your copy (and sometimes design) theme.  You may have several copy themes (versions) in one campaign, which is actually a sound marketing strategy because it means your campaign is better targeted.

 

Segmentation

Segmentation refers to breaking your house list into smaller parts that share one or more important characteristics.  If you’re marketing to consumers (often referred to as Business-to-Consumer Marketing or B2C), market segments could include one or more of the following:

• demographic — age, gender, race, home ownership, employment, household income, married or single, # of children in household, etc.
• geographic —  zip code, country, region
• psychographic — behavior, attitudes and values

If you’re marketing to businesses (often called business-to-business marketing, or B2B), segments of interest might be one or more of the following:  Company size (in employees, annual revenue), industry, SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) code, # of years in business, products and/or services offered).

You can see how important segmentation is to launching an effective email marketing campaign.  For example, your message and/or offer would undoubtedly be different to companies that employ 1,000+ vs. companies that employ less than 10 people.

 

SPAM

A common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE) or  UCE, which refers specifically to unsolicited commercial e-mail.  From the emarketer’s perspective, spam is any email sent to recipients who have not given the sender permission (or opted-in) to send them emails.

Visit the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC)  webpage that describes in detail the legal issues surrounding spam: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm

  

Subject Line

Along with the From line in your email, the subject line is a critical factor in getting your email opened.  A From line from a recognized sender will substantially improve (but not guarantee) an increased open rate.  Research has shown that the majority of email recipients look at the From line first. After recipients know who’s sending them an email, the Subject Line is the next key to getting your email opened.

The Subject Line in an email is like a headline in a news story or an ad. (In fact, study newspaper headlines for a good lesson in how to write a compelling and interesting Subject Line.) If the headline or Subject Line in the email is relevant, intriguing and engaging to the recipient, chances are very good that the email will be opened.

You should write the Subject Line first; it will help you better focus and target your message in the body copy.  Remember, body text must deliver what you promise in the Subject Line.

Here are a few tips on writing your Subject Line:

• Make it short and descriptive (under 50 characters including spaces)
• Entice the reader to open the email
• Don’t make false promises you don’t intend to deliver on
• Using the word “free” or the recipient’s name triggers spam filters
• Localize the Subject Line, i.e., Attend Boston Event: Become a Smart Email Marketer (total:
• 50 characters with spaces)
• Don’t use all CAPS or mutliple exclamation points
• Asking a question often works well as long as it grabs the reader’s attention
• Numbers and tips work well, i.e., 10 Tips to Becoming a Smart Email Marketer
• Urgency also works, i.e., Just 5 Days Left, Just 24 Hours to Register, etc.

 

Targeting

How important is targeting?  You can’t even begin to think about your marketing strategy without knowing as much as you can possibly know about the audience most likely to want/need your product or service.

Just for starters, how can you select appropriate media to reach prospective customers with your message without knowing the characteristics of your target audience? Or how can you write effective, persuasive copy that will interest and entice prospects to become customers, if you don’t know the characteristics of your target audience?

Identifying your target audience is not rocket science.  As a business owner or someone interested in starting your own business, you probably have a pretty good idea who the target audience is for your product or service.  Take the time to do a lot of research to learn everything you can about your target audience.  As you know, there’s a wealth of free information on the internet.

Many believe they have multiple target audiences; generally they have one target audience with multiple segments (see Segmentation above).

ATTN: SMALL BIZ OWNERS. Email Marketing

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

EMarketing blog: http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP/

 

The mission of this blog, started by the Founders of www.helpamericaspeople.com, is to raise awareness of the most cost-effective marketing tool for Small Business owners like you >>>  EMAIL MARKETING

 

 This blog will introduce you to 13 terms you need to know to expand your knowledge of  email marketing.   See the blog posting dated April 17th to learn about the following terms:  Above the Fold, Click-Through/Click-Through Rate, Deliverability and Email Service Providers (ESPs).

 

The email marketing terms covered today are: House List, HTML vs. Text Email, List Hygiene, Opt-in, Personalization.

 

House List

 Your  house list is your company’s list of customers and prospects that, hopefully, you’ve been building since you started your business.  Whether you’re using Excel or a user-friendly, low cost database like ACT, your house list is arguably your most valuable asset.

A house list is often referred to as a permission-based list because you’ve asked each customer and prospect for permission to communicate with them via email.  If you send emails to addresses that haven’t given you permission, you take a risk of being reported as a Spammer.

Develop an email marketing strategy to maintain an ongoing dialog with your house list that includes relevant, informative content and special offers.  Remember, it costs 5 times as much to acquire a new customer vs. selling to an existing customer.

 

HTML vs Text Emails

You may not know what HTML stands for, but this type of email is easily recognizable and, undoubtedly, you’ve seen many in your Inbox.  These emails are very professional (and promotional) looking – usually in 4-color with creative graphics like images, photos, logos, and formatting techniques, including underlining, bold, hyperlinks  and fancy fonts.  They look like small magazine ads or promotional postcards you receive in the mail.  Not only do they quickly attract the attention of recipients, code is embedded in HTML emails that provides you with tracking information.

Some disadvantages of HTML are:

• they look like ads, so recipients may delete them quickly
• not everyone can view HTML
• they can be slow to load
• you need a professional designer

A text email is just what it says — text only.  You receive as many as hundreds a day from your friends and family.  As an email marketer, you can think of a text email, if well-written, as a sales letter.  The advantages to sending text emails include every recipient can view it properly, it’s easy to produce and mobile devices can read it easily.  Some of the disadvantages include:

• you can’t hyperlink words – you must include the entire address in the email
• no formatting options, i.e., underlining, centering, bold, color
• can’t track the open rate

 List Hygiene

The importance of keeping your house list “clean” cannot be overstated.  If possible, your house list should be cleaned at least once a week.  This means deleting bounces and unsubcribes from your list.  Also, when someone wants to be added to your mailing list or become a subscriber to your enewsletter, try to add them within 24 hours and be sure to send them a Thank You/Confirmation email in return.

Try to avoid someone sending you a second email to request addition, deletion or an updated email address; answer questions and comments as soon as possible.  A quick response shows professionalism, respect and involvement with your audience.

Opt-In (Permission-Based)

 To be a legitimate and ethical email marketer, you must gain permission to send your emails.  Email marketing is often referred to as permission-based or opt-in email marketing.  The potential recipient must give you permission to send them emails.   And, you must also assure them that you won’t sell or share their email address with third-party marketers and that they can unsubscribe to your mailing list at any time.

Additionally, as part of your email marketing strategy, you will need to decide how long you will keep an unresponsive email address on your list before deleting it; the same is true for bounces. Remember, your ultimate goal is to have a quality list not a quantity list.

There are two types of Opt-In Emails: “single” opt-in and “double” opt-in.

A “single” opt-in list is usually created by inviting members to join via a web form or by sending an email message to a “subscriber” email address.  Once readers send the form or the email message, they are subscribed to your list.

A “double” opt-in list, also called a “confirmed” opt-in list, requires the subscriber to reply to a confirmation message to activate the subscription.

The advantage of the “single” opt-in method is that your list will grow faster. However, there are some pitfalls, like the fact that people may subscribe friends or family, who may not want to receive your messages and who could, in the worse case scenario, accuse you of spam.

The advantage of the “double” opt-in method is that you will have a higher quality list (since only interested readers will take the time to go through your confirmation process.

 Important Tip:  If you have a website, include a link for site visitors to join your mailing list or to subscribe to your email campaigns or monthly email newsletter.  Place the link “above the fold” on each web page.  This method is the most cost-effective  (FREE!)  list-building technique in the internet world.

 

Next Post:  More Email Marketing Terms

ATTN: SMALL BIZ OWNERS. Email Marketing

Is Low Cost, Targeted, Measurable, Effective.

EMarketing blog: http://helpamericaspeople.com/EWP/

 

The mission of this blog, started by the Founders of www.helpamericaspeople.com, is to raise awareness of the most cost-effective marketing tool for Small Business owners like you >>>  EMAIL MARKETING

 

 

For the next few weeks, this blog will introduce you to 13 terms you need to know to expand your knowledge of  email marketing.  Email marketing is truly a “killer” marketing tool that will be around for a long time to come.  It’s especially vital for small business owners to understand and utilize email marketing to its fullest extent because it is arguably the top online vehicle to establish an ongling relationship with customers and prospects.  Email marketing offers the small business owner a high impact communications tool at a very low cost and impressive ROI.

The marketing terms to be covered include:

• Above the Fold
• Click Through/Click Through Rate
• Deliverability
• ESP
• House List
• HTML (vs. text)
• List Hygiene
• Opt-In (Permission-Based Email)
• Personalization
• Segmentation
• SPAM
• Subject Line
• Targeting

Above the Fold

A graphic design term often associated with a broadsheet size newspaper, i.e., New York Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, etc.  Because of the size of a broadsheet newspaper , the paper is either delivered or displayed folded in half horizontally.  Traditionally, the most important news stories of the day will appear above the fold.

Above the fold in the internet world is designated as the content the reader sees immediately upon opening the email — without scrolling down.  The most important content and links should be above the fold to motivate recipients to engage with your message and  respond to your “call to action”, such as  dowload yur free white paper, sign-up for your mailing list and receive a free e-book, subscribe to your free monthly newsletter, click to fill out contact form for a free Email Marketing Analysis, etc.

Click Through/Click Through Rate

When an email recipient clicks on your email that was delivered to their inbox, that’s considered an Open.  If they click on a link within the email message (also known as a hyperlink), the term used is Click Through.

The Click Through Rate (CTR) is an important metric. To determine the Click Through Rate, use the following formula:  the number of unique clicks on a link in your email message divided by the total number of unique Opens.  (Unique Opens are calculated by subtracting bounces, unsubscribes and duplicate clicks by the same individual. )  For example:

XYZ company sent out 1,000 emails; 25 recipients Opened the email.  That’s an Open rate of 2.5%. Of those 25 who opened the email, 5 clicked on the link to download a free white paper.  The CTR is 5 divided by 1,000, or  .5% (one-half of 1 %).  When you work with an Email Service, this metric and several others will be provided to you in a performance report after each campaign.

Clicks and Click Through Rate are two of the most important metrics used to measure the success of your email marketing campaigns.

Deliverability

From a marketer’s point of view, deliverability directly affects the success or failure of an email marketing campaign.  When you email in bulk (hundreds or thousands) it’s inevitable that less than 100% will be delivered.  Maintaining deliverability in the 90th percentile is very important, because those who never receive your email can’t respond to your offer, i.e., click on the link or links in your email.

There are two main reasons why emails don’t reach their destination:  bounces and anti-spam mechanisms.

Bounces

There are two types of bounces: soft bounces and hard bounces.

A soft  bounce refers to an email not delivered due to a  temporary problem on the recipient’s end, such as a full mail box, an auto reply message set by the recipient announcing he or she is on vacation, out-of-town on business, etc. or there are technical difficulties with the server on the receiving end.  These soft bounces should be identified and sent the email again within 12 hours.

A hard bounce refers to an email that’s not delivered because the email address is invalid (not a “live” address).  Be sure to double check these bounces for typos in the email address.  You need the exact email address, otherwise the email will quickly bounce back.

Spam

If you email is identified as spam, it’s either deleted before delivery or sent to the recipient’s junk/spam folder instead of their inbox.

Because anti-spam measures are not fulproof, sometimes legitimate, permission-based emails are labeled incorrectly.  This situation is called a false positive.  Unlike bounces, it’s unlikely you’ll get feedback on your false positives.

Email Service Provider (ESP)

An ESP provides email marketing services, which typically  include helping you to manage your email list, offering hundreds of HTML email templates for you to choose from, deployment of your email campaign(the actual sending of the emails) and performance reports that showimportant metrics such as click through rate,  undeliverables, unsubscribes, etc.

Free-trials are available from some of the largest ESP’s like Constant Contact, iContact and Vertical Response.  Depending on which ESP you work with, monthly rates can be based on the size of your email list or the number of emails you want to deploy monthly.  Once the Free Trial is over, monthly rates can be as low as $15.00 (Constant Contact charges $15.00 per month if your list is no larger than 500 addresses; the number of emails you can deploy is unlimited.)

For the low monthly fee, ESP’s are essentially offering a Do-it-Yourself Service.  If you feel reasonably comfortable with cutting and pasting and downloading, you can do well with these services.  The final question is:  do you have the time?  Because frequency is important in email marketing.  You are building a relationship with your customers and prospects.  If they don’t hear from you at least monthly, they will soon forget you.  Also, these large ESP’s have upwards of 500,000 customers.  Be sure their Customer Service Dept. is responsive to your questions or need for help.

If you need some hand-holding and/or don’t have the time or staff for the Do It Yourself method, you may want to investigate very small ESP’s who do virtually all the work for you.  Check out http://www.helpamericaspeople.com/E/default.html*

*Full disclosure:  the blogger is a co-founder of the ESP located at the email address above.

 

Next Post:  More Email Marketing Terms